Korean flash fabber SK Hynix has built a 72-layer 3D NAND die with 256Gb capacity.
That number of layers, in effect a higher-rise flash chip than anybody else has built, is impressive but the 256Gb capacity is not; Toshiba's 64-layer flash die has a 512Gb capacity. Like the SK Hynix chip, it is a TLC (3bits/cell) device. It …

These numbers are really quite high for a single die. High capacity nand chips tend to have a bunch of (back-ground, so they're waffer-thin) die stacked on top of each other, and a bit of cunning electronics to make it look like one honkin' great device, all in a bit of black plastic with some balls on the bottom. Tablets will then often have a (small) number of these packages to reach the numbers they want.

The cloud! Won't somebody think of the cloud!

Google, Apple, Amazon, and media rights managers have been telling everybody to stream from the cloud and pay monthly fees for everything. Now storage is fighting back.

I already have a 200 GB microSD card in my phone for offline everything. IT departments don't like streaming music and the best time to have a map and a copy of Wikipedia is when you're in the middle of nowhere without a signal.